Just how many scientific studies are fraudulent?

Although deception in science is rare, it’s probably more common than many people think. Surveys show that roughly 2 percent of researchers admit to behavior that would constitute misconduct—the big three sins are fabrication of data, fraud, and plagiarism (other forms can include many other actions, including failure to get ethics approval for studies that involve humans). And that’s just those who admit to it—a recent analysis found evidence of problematic figures and images in nearly 4 percent of studies with those graphics, a figure that had quadrupled since 2000.

A pooled weighted average of 1.97% (N = 7, 95%CI: 0.86–4.45) of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a serious form of misconduct by any standard– and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% (N = 12, 95% CI: 9.91–19.72) for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices. Meta-regression showed that self reports surveys, surveys using the words “falsification” or “fabrication”, and mailed surveys yielded lower percentages of misconduct. When these factors were controlled for, misconduct was reported more frequently by medical/pharmacological researchers than others.

Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct.

I hope some of the efforts by researchers to address this – through a variety of means – are successful.

Take a look at the rest of the article as well: just as individual scholars feel a lot of pressure to commit fraud, big schools have a lot of money on the line with certain researchers and may not want to admit possible issues.